A high-speed network environment typically includes network devices such as routers and switches used for facilitating delivery of information packets and/or data traffic from source devices to destination devices via one or more communication networks. Information pertaining to the transfer of data packet(s) and/or frame(s) through the network(s) is usually embedded within the packet and/or frame itself. Each packet, for instance, traveling through multiple nodes via one or more communications networks such as Internet and/or Ethernet can typically be handled independently from other packets in a packet stream or traffic. Each node which may include routing, switching, and/or bridging engines processes incoming packets or frames, and determines where the packet(s) or frame(s) should be forwarded.
In order to establish a high-speed computing network, element management system (“EMS”) of the network is typically required to identify and/or initialize each and every attached network element (“NE”) via a discovery process. When an EMS discovers one or more NEs, a large amount of data relating to discovery process including various circuit and node information need to be transferred from the NE to the EMS. For example, to obtain circuit data, EMS typically has to send large number of SNMP bulk requests, and subsequently, receives large number of independent responses back from NEs.
A problem associated with the conventional network discovery is that a typical discovery process takes resources and consumes time. Data transfer between EMS and NEs is typically slow partially due to the limitation and overhead of network protocol used for handling the data exchange.